Jennesia Pedri reviews Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio (Goose Lane).
Patty Osborne
Absolute Centre
Patty Osborne reviews Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart).
Stephen Henighan
Against Efficiency
Stephen Henighan argues that efficiency has become a core value that heightens social divisions.
Francois-Marc Gagnon
Among the Curious
Francois-Marc Gagnon explores curiosity as the opposite of indifference.
Alberto Manguel
Being Here
In the world between here and there, what place does one call home?
Ted Bishop
Edith and Frank
Ted Bishop visits Edith Iglauer and her husband Frank in their seaside home, where he is treated to a fast drive on a winding road, conversation on good books, and a lesson on what it's like to grow old gracefully.
Stephen Henighan
A Table in Paris
Stephen Henighan remembers Mavis Gallant, the original nomad of Canadian literature, who wrote some of Canada's finest fiction at Pablo Picasso's café table in Paris.
Stephen Henighan
Wheels
Stephen Henighan investigates bus travel as one of Canada's last surviving democratic spaces.
Michael Turner
Vancouver Re-Remembered
Michael Turner reviews At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver, 1937-1998, by Claudia Cornwall.
Jane Silcott
Mimesisa
Jane Silcott explores the ideas of beauty and mimicry both in theory and in the wilds of a motel complex.
Daniel Francis
Deviance on Display
Daniel Francis investigates the practice of visiting asylums and penitentiaries as entertainment in nineteenth-century Canada.
Alberto Manguel
Facing the Camera
How much does a photograph really capture the essence of a person?
Stephen Osborne
1968
Stephen Osborne compares the "major problem" of loitering in 1968 Vancouver to the 2012 Occupy movement.
Michał Kozłowski
Boomtown
L.B. Foote fled Newfoundland to avoid life as a cod fisherman and became Winnipeg's best-known photographer, chronicling Boomtown's growth, energy and struggles.
Daniel Francis
Noir
Daniel Francis explores the photographer as Vancouver's most interesting historian.
Alberto Manguel
Observer and Observed
Alberto Manguel reflects on art as a witness to the human desire to be infinite and eternal.
Stephen Osborne
The Man Who Stole Christmas
On a dark day in January in Toronto, when the sky was much too close to the ground, I went to see the grave of Timothy Eaton with my friend Tom Walmsley.
Stephen Henighan
Tigers' Anatomy
As Canadian leaders look to emulate Asian nations, our government fails to see that the tigers' fatal flaw is the absence of democracy. Or, maybe they do see.
Daniel Francis
Warrior Nation
The Great White North gets rebranded and gains some military muscle: goodbye peacenik, hello soldier.
Alberto Manguel
How to Talk About Books We Haven’t Read, Part Two
I’ve now read Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? and I’m happy to say that I was right.
Alberto Manguel
How to Talk About Books We Haven’t Read
A French writer whose name I hadn’t heard before, Pierre Bayard, has written a book called Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? published by Éditions de Minuit in a collection aptly titled Paradoxe. A number of critics in France have writt
David Campion
Memory and the Valley: An Interview with Sandra Shields and David Campion
Ross Merriam
Ann Diamond on Memory and Forgetting
Most of our lives probably disappear from our memories, although some people remember much more than others.
Stephen Henighan
Nations Without Publishers
In 2002, when my essay collection When Words Deny the World was published, people started behaving strangely. Ambitious young writers scurried out of sight when I entered a room, as though afraid that irate authors might banish them from Toronto for having spoken to me.
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
Emily’s mother had unusually large eyes that bulged slightly and often turned red, and she stared at people in restaurants and stores. Sometimes Emily’s mother commented on these people’s conversations, or laughed at their jokes, as if she were part
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Review of "Mushrooms of British Columbia" by Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther.
Anson Ching
The Geist of Turkey
Review of "Ethos" directed by Berkun Oya.
Michael Hayward
Seventy-Two Hours to Animal
Review of "Bunker: Building for the End Times" by Bradley Garrett.
Kathleen Murdock
Juice Worth the Squeeze
Review of "Shadow of Doubt: The Trials of Dennis Oland, Revised and Expanded Edition" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon.
Kris Rothstein
Decolonizing Canada
Review of "Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being" Amy Fung.
Kathleen Murdock
Doing It Special
Review of "nedi nezu (Good Medicine)" by Tenille K. Campbell.
Anson Ching
Recipe for a Harlequin Romance
Review of "Ring" by André Alexis.
CONNIE KUHNS
Rise Up
Review of "Rise Up: Songs of the Women's Movement" Co-Produced by Jim Brown, Heather A. Smith, and Donna Korones.
Patty Osborne
Middle Sister
Review of "Milkman" by Anna Burns.
Michael Hayward
Purveyors of Electric Fans
Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.
Michael Hayward
Tree Lit
Review of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.
Anson Ching
Voyeur Galore
Review of "Captains of the Sands" by Jorge Amado.
Patty Osborne
Why White People Are Funny
Review of "Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny" Zebedee Nungak and Mark Sandiford.
Jonathan Heggen
Korean Supper
Review of "Crying in H Mart: A Memoir " by Michelle Zauner.
Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture
Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Eaten to Extinction
Review of "Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food" by Lenore Newman.
Michael Hayward
A Longing to Be Far Away
Review of "Fernweh" by Teju Cole.
Shyla Seller
Postal Lit
Review of "Long Live the Post Horn!" by Vigdis Hjorth.
SYLVIA TRAN
Poutine Pilgrimage
Review of poutine at Robson Fries in Tokyo.
JILL MANDRAKE
Older and Better
Review of "The Old Man in the Mirror Isn’t Me" by Ray Robertson.
Stephen Osborne
The Becoming of Vancouver
Review of "Becoming Vancouver: A History" by Daniel Francis.
Michael Hayward
Known to be Strange
Known and Strange Things (Random House) is a collection of Teju Cole’s essays and other short pieces, many of which have previously appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere online.
Michael Hayward
A Blindness at the Centre of Seeing
Cole’s most recent book, Blind Spot (Random House), a generous hardcover printed on glossy stock, presents Cole’s photographs on recto pages, with brief, allusive essays on the facing verso page.
Patty Osborne
B for Beatrice
Patty Osborne on wacky kid tales and the joy of animated storytelling.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Alberto Manguel
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
He said he just wanted towels. There was no reason to be afraid.
Stephen Osborne
When Blurbs Are All You Need
This text appeared on the back cover of It’s Never Over by Morley Callaghan, Laurentian Library edition, 1972. (Originally published in 1930.)
Michael Hayward
From Beyond the Grave
Michael Hayward on Memoirs from Beyond the Grave by François-René de Chateaubriand
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Of Cats and Men
Kelsea O’Connor on Manfried the Man by Caitlyn Major and Kelly Bastow.
Carolyne Montgomery
In the Pines
It is a Sunday in August. We drive from London, Ontario, to the Pinery Provincial Park in a new green 1964 Mercury Comet.
BILLEH NICKERSON
V4G 1N4
A poem about a postal code.
ANNMARIE MACKINNON
Annals of Premium Brand Yogurt
Geist has discovered that millenials love yogurt and hate doorbells. Thanks, Twitter.
Patty Osborne
Pounder Dangling on Duqesne Island
Patty Osborne on the CBC documentary series The Neddeaus of Duqesne Island.
John Patterson
Devil’s Night
On Halloween in 1966, John Patterson's father burned down the Jones's house to give the neighbourhood kids a thrill.
Thad McIlroy
Gathering Dust
Thad McIlroy on Brian Busby's The Dusty Bookcase.
Thad McIlroy
Barely Bearable
Thad McIlroy on Witold Szabłowski’s Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny.
GALE SMALLWOOD-JONES
Working Life for a Girl in the 1960s
We got paid once a week in cash - it made you feel special the first few times.
Alberto Manguel
The Devil
We insist The Devil whispers horrible things in our ear and inspires our worst deeds.
Michael Hayward
Recursive Voyeurism
Michael Hayward on László Krasznahorkai's The Manhattan Project.
JILL MANDRAKE
Recall, Retention, Recognition
Jill Mandrake on False Memories and Other Likely Tales by Ernest Hekkanen.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Smashing Identity Algorithms, Yes Please
While status registration under the Indian Act is a construct, claiming status identity isan important factor in Indigenous identity and cultural transmission.
Daniel Francis
Murder, He Wrote
Daniel Francis on Geoff Meggs attempt to solve the murder of strike leader Frank Rogers.
Thad McIlroy
Baskets Case
Thad McIlroy thinks you should watch Zach Galifianakis' Baskets.
Marc Plourde
Rooms to Let in Bohemia
A poem by Marc Plourde from Borrowed Days: Poems New and Selected.
Peggy Thompson
Haunts
Peggy Thompson on Amber Dawn's Sodom Road Exit.
Kris Rothstein
The Art of Travel
Alain de Botton, whose intellect and sense of humour brought us How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy, enters new territory with The Art of Travel (Hamish Hamilton). Here he takes on our fascination with other places and
JILL MANDRAKE
In the Wee, Small Hours of the Morning…
Jill Mandrake discusses Kevin Shaw's poetry.
Michael Hayward
The How and Why of It
Michael Hayward on books that may make you a better writer.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
New Spinsters Smash the Patriarchy
Mallory Ortberg's subversive dark fairy tales.
Patty Osborne
Freely Indirect and Illegally Selfish
Patty Osborne shares insights on Peter Carey's book.